Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Administration at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Applying PMO and / or a Processes and Procedures Manual is similar to a golf or tennis swing, the key factor are your feet which we call in sports “fundamentals”, many players actually forget about the fundamentals and eventually do not have success.

Similar to sports, Administration also has its fundamentals that is often overlooked. The key fundamental in Processes, Procedures or running a PMO is Organization. If the documents; formats; flowcharts are NOT organized, then they can not be accessed and if they can not be accessed then they are not used, or even worse, its made up.

Organization can be done from A to Z or from Z to A, Organization starts by a file structure but it doesn’t stop there, you must have coding and naming of your documents in a logical and reasonable manner. It doesn’t work if you have only numerical numbers. Let me say it again “Logical & Reasonable” it is very important. Ill suggest using acronyms instead of numbers which really don’t say anything about the content or use of the documents.

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Administration at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Stating that BIM is 20% modeling and 80% methodology seems unfair for many of you (especially for REVIT savvy professionals), but it depends on how you look at BIM in the first place. For example, if you are looking at BIM cost wise, then definitely these numbers don’t make sense, since the heavy workload will be on the modeling side, but if you look at it as the “level of importance” then you might agree with me that methods will prevail.

Everything starts with a plan (or should), everything is controlled by a process (or should) and although you could say that without a methodology one could easily model a project, well, that is very true, however, the expectation will be much lower. Similar to construction projects, many owners underestimate the value of giving time to Plan their project and that is why many of these projects fail. Some projects do get done but at a much higher cost.

As many of you know, BIM is not just about modeling, and its not just about 4D or 5D or how many other D´s you would like to promote. BIM is lot about innovation, on how we can be creative to minimize risk vs how we did things in the past, so in my “BIM BOOK” I have infinite D´s.

Innovation should be followed by a process and only then followed by the execution.

How you plan is how you execute. Seems reasonable yes? After all, you can not go ahead and model a project, or provide BIM coordination; BIM collaboration; BIM take offs; BIM clashes; BIM timelines; BIM Drawings; BIM Change Orders-Submittals-RFI; BIM Budgets; BIM Quality; BIM Safety; the list goes on and on (infinite D´s) without its due Plan, Process, Procedures, Protocols, Policies, in other words you can not go Dee unless you Pee.

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

“Construction is about people, and we are all different, without processes you will get different outcomes, and that is a big risk. “ DP

Writing processes and procedures might seem very simple to do, some executives think you only need an intern or a junior professional to write off everything that the company does in a comprehensive form, inserting a flowchart here and there and voilá !!!. These are the same executives that think it’s a good idea for the minutes of a construction meeting to be written by administrators or someone who is not a manager and deeply involved in the project, thus paving the way for risk !!!

Processes and Procedures (P&P) reflect the companies religion (culture), its the “Way” of doing things and a basis for continuous improvement, it provides consistency and ultimately provides efficiency and effectiveness, so how come the “Bible” of the Company is sometimes left to junior professionals?

Anyone who is writing the P&P manual should be very experienced in what the company does and is trying to accomplish. There is no value in just writing things without analyzing and improving each process, plan and playbook. Our experience has included suggesting our clients what they need to do, what direction/strategy/improvement they should make in each process, we have re-organized their Org Chart, reorganized their document coding and structure, changed up and down their “practices” so they could be “best practices”, we´ve analyzed their professionals and expressed our opinion in which professionals are capable and which professionals need additional training to follow the Process and Procedures Manual.

Implementing processes and procedures takes a cultural understanding of the people who will be executing it; of the company; of each and every process; of the strategy to execute each procedure. It is the body and mind of what the company does, surely some projects might survive without them, conversely, some of them will fail. Developing and executing your P&P manual will provide you with consistency and with the basis of continuous improvement enhancing the culture of “the company way” .

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Historically quantity take offs are done by 2 or 3 people (depending on the size) with the purpose of having an itemized schedule of values (SOV) and bid for a construction project.

These take offs are done either with a calculator or with a spreadsheet. This process goes hand in hand with the following risks:

Human Error: mistakes on the arithmetic

Interpretation: viewing the drawings differently than others

No inclusion: missing on a activity or item

Disorganize: not knowing how the numbers came about

History: having to come back and trying to know that was he or she thinking

These 5 risks are very common and can have mistakes either low balling or high balling the budget. So, what can we do to eliminate or minimize these risks?

The answer is Technology…

Many companies; development groups and contractors have underestimated technology to a point that they don’t have the minimum intention in using it because of skepticism. Utilizing a BIM process for Budgeting & quantity take offs is a reality now, it will eliminate the 5 risks listed above and enhance the precision of the quantity; the interpretation of the drawings and most importantly it will bring project participants for enhanced collaboration that will start off the project a better one, in other words it will not depend on a couple of people but rather of many people which is best.

Utilizing BIM for this purpose takes experience; know how; and a good process platform. You cannot just give it a go, you must have lessons learned so the earlier you start the better or better yet hire the right company to do it. Here an example of how we manage to visualize and quantify 3 types of concrete joints for the final SOV (click following link)

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Founder of PIZA Consulting, company that specializes in developing and providing Project Management Office (PMO) as its PM/CM Services for Latin America.

We have been taught to look forward, to have “vision”, we even have several processes and “best practices” such as a 3 Week look ahead schedule or a ACR (Anticipated Cost Report), that are really focused in what’s coming ahead of us.

But what about what´s behind us? Why are we not looking backward Is it because its already done for? Or because we are taught that Would´ve, Could´ve, Should´ve are lame excuses? There is nothing lame or categorized as an excuse when we are learning.

Looking behind in a construction project we can see the causes of our problems, if we look even harder we will find the root causes of the problems. This is typically known as Lessons Learned.

The majority of the risks of our projects are caused from the initial stages of the project, the team that is in charge during this time mostly lacks experience and construction capability and they are the ones who hire the Designer; Contractor; Suppliers; Management Agency, they are the ones that have no idea of the consequences of their early actions or should I say, inactions, such as lack of payments, late payment, lack of decisions, approvals and most importantly lack of a well done RFP.

Analyze your risks !!! look behind you before you look in front. Hire capable and experienced professionals since the beginning, don’t be the person who drops the first domino, that will result in a poorly project effect.

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Founder of PIZA Consulting, company that specializes in developing and providing Project Management Office (PMO) as its PM/CM Services for Latin America.

Since 2005 I’ve been hearing the word “collaboration” as a punch line from many professionals including business owners and company directors in the Construction Industry. In reality “Collaboration” had no real method, or software or even a process or tool that could support it effectively, making it merely impossible to apply it. Not until 2010 when BIM started to pick up in the industry and those of us who understood BIM found the appropriate tool that could make Collaboration possible.

You see anyone who is not following a BIM process is not really collaborating because nobody actually reviews the project drawings, actually the majority of the project participants study no more than a couple of drawings out of the hundreds. Even the Engineers and Architects are not collaborating in an effective way, and that is why we see so many RFI´s and Change Orders. You can just imagine the dreadful scenario if Stakeholders, Sponsors, Owners, Consultants, Facility Managers, End Users are not reviewing drawings or probably you already know the outcome.

Diligent BIM process can close that Collaboration gap, using Virtual Reality can close it even more, and surely Augmented Reality / Mix Reality will close it indefinitely.

We included VR (Virtual Reality) as part of our BIM Execution Plan last year, and it has proven to be very helpful for project participants, since the core mishap of collaboration is having time to review the drawings and understanding them, with VR you will not see any drawings at all. VR provides all the drawings in one single 360 environment. It’s not only entertaining, its time efficient and effective reducing in a substantial way Change Orders and RFI´s as well as increasing project participant know how.

Damián Pizá, is the owner of PIZA Consulting a CM firm operating in Mexico and Latin America, he is a Certified Construction Manager; he studied his Masters in Construction Management at the University of Texas at Arlington; LEED AP; OSHA +30; Member of the CMAA (Construction Management Association of America) Member of the Emergent Technology Committee

Founder of PIZA Consulting, company that specializes in developing and providing Project Management Office (PMO) as its PM/CM Services for Latin America.